Farewell, Pirate Cachet
The cachet of the pirate nerd is based on this:
“I have every game (and any other kind of app) there is. I don’t really have time to use most of them, but I have all of them. And if you, my friend, want an app? I can get it for you. No problem.”
And so, of course, his friends worship him accordingly.
Apple’s App Store is ruining pirate cachet:
The pirate guy has to hack (a.k.a. “jailbreak”) his iPhone to be able to use his library of pirated apps. This is risky, and causes problems every time there’s an OS update — but it’s doable.
Even if he’s hacked his iPhone, the pirate guy can’t offer free apps to his friends unless they’ve hacked their iPhones too. Most of them haven’t, and don’t want to.
The pirate guy’s friends can get lots of apps from the App Store, for free or for a few dollars each, and can get them easily and immediately, right on their phone. The whole library of apps is available to them already.
The pirate guy can buy a much more piracy-friendly Android phone, but then his iPhone-toting friends won’t be interested in any of the pirated apps he has to offer, because none of those apps run on the iPhone, and getting them to run on the iPhone is more trouble than even the most dedicated hacker-pirates want to go to (especially in light of item #2 above).
A large part, I suspect, of the current backlash against Apple is based on this lost pirate cachet. Of course, none of the complainers are going to admit that openly (since piracy is illegal), so they come up with other reasons to hate Apple’s policies, and reasons to try to discourage Apple from continuing those policies — i.e., “It’s inevitable that open systems will win! Apple’s iOS may be doing well now but is soon to be eclipsed by Android.” Etc. And, of course, such predictions are also intended to discourage their friends from getting iPhones, or sticking with them.
But all that naysaying isn’t doing a darned thing. Apple’s figured out how to run this game right, and it’s really working.
Sorry, pirate boy. It’s over. You had your fun. Everyone thought you were a god. Now they can see you’re a nobody. Complain if you want. Badmouth Apple if you must. Predict Apple’s doom if you feel a moral obligation to do so, no matter how foolish those predictions will look a few years from now.
But while you’re doing that, here’s a tip: Learn Xcode on the sly, and start writing some cool iOS apps. You don’t have to tell anybody you’re doing it. And when you release a winning app several months or a year or two from now? No one will know, or even care to know, that you started back in mid-2010 when you were predicting Apple’s imminent demise. They’ll just think you whipped it up overnight.
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